How do you measure the impact of your social media campaigns on your goals?

Something I have found helpful is breaking down goals into achievable buckets. You don't have to achieve everything with one post (or even 10), and they do not all have to be achieved at the same time.

In order to effectively measure the impact of a social media campaign, it’s important to be clear on what we are trying to archive, know our numbers (numbers don’t lie), and know our target audience and their needs, also not all platform are created igual so choosing the right platform for the job is also important. Using SMART goals is an effective way to measure and assess the outcome of the campaign.

Sometimes restricting the number of platforms you are on is a good strategy. Start by serving one or two audiences well on one or two platforms. It all depends on how wide of a net you need to cast and how low the barriers to entry are for your product, service or charity.

Messages are communicated in different ways across various platforms. For example, a tweet can be crafted and received differently by your audience than an Instagram story. One is mostly catered toward written text while the other is about the visual experience.

Don't forget to ask yourself "How will I know if my content has been successful? What will I see in the data. What will I hear from my customer and community?" Knowing what you want and staying accountable to that is hugely important.

Each platform presents differently - consider what you have in text, video, length, etc., and how much your content needs to be adjusted to each of them while still keeping the point.

I like to put this method into the three C's: Content, Context, Conversion (in that order). Content is like song lyrics. They're just there, genre-less with potential but don't really mean much on their own. But in the context of music and tone, the content now has a personality. The goal then becomes to convert a listener into a fan. In marketing speak, a blog or other long form piece of content doesn't mean much. But if you make it into a smaller bite sized piece within the context of your social media platform, you're more likely to convert a passerby into a follower, or at the very least an email subscriber.

Remember talk to people on social media like they are sitting right in front of you...it's SOCIAL media after all, not hide-in-the-corner media.

Look back to the goals yourself and craft a post mortem with your learnings. Failing to reach certain goals isn't bad, its an opportunity to grow for future content or campaigns.